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New Releases June 15—June 21 and Readers Choice C*ntest

A lighter week this week—if you can call twenty new releases a light week. I mean, I knew my TBR pile was out of control, but yesterday I finally shelved the books I had stacked in the floor (this is besides the 14 shelves full of TBRs already)–and it was almost 200. Which is why I’m starting a new feature this Friday to unload books, so stay tuned!A little shameless self-promotion time. Head over to the fabulous She Wolf Reads today, where I’m talking about Robin Ashton, my eagle shapeshifter in Storm Force. Our eagle named Robin is a bit on the wild side! And there’s a giveaway, of course.Also, I’m over at Urban Fantasy Investigations today, talking about five preternatural species to be on the lookout for when you’re next in New Orleans. We’re only a week away from the paperback release of River Road…and the premier here of the Jean Lafitte novelette Jackson Square. And another giveaway at this site.

Now…what do you want to read this week? As always, leave a comment telling me the book you’d most like to win, and maybe random.org will make your wishes come true. Your choice of print or digital unless otherwise stated. International? Of course! As long as Book Depository delivers to your country, please enter. If you’d prefer the first book in a series listed here, that’s okay, too.

Life for Kirsty d’Arc might not be perfect, but it’s far from hellish. She likes her job, has a great BFF and truly admires Conrad, her boss. When she dives in front of a lunatic’s blade to save him from certain death, she finds out Conrad isn’t so admirable after all. He’s traded her soul to the Devil. While her body lies comatose on the Mortal Coil, Kirsty’s spirit is dragged straight to Hell. The place is quirky, wacky, and not without charm. She seeks out allies, earning the friendship of a powerful drag demon, a psychic server and most importantly, Hell’s civil servant. Stuck in the netherworld, Kirsty vows she’ll do everything on her postmortem bucket-list, starting with getting her life back and ensuring that Conrad has Hell to pay.(ebook only)

Mahala is a city of contrasts: light and dark. Hope and despair.Rojan Dizon just wants to keep his head down. But his worst nightmare is around the corner. With the destruction of their power source, his city is in crisis: riots are breaking out, mages are being murdered, and the city is divided. But Rojan’s hunt for the killers will make him responsible for all-out anarchy. Either that, or an all-out war. And there’s nothing Rojan hates more than being responsible.

As Cole begins to accept her new life as Akhet, someone who can remember flashes of her past lives, every new vision from her past lives helps explain who she is in this life. As her passion for Griffon grows, she learns to identify other Akhet around her, including Drew, the young self-made millionaire who reveals his startling connection to Cole-he was her husband in Elizabethan England and gave her the ankh necklace that has been returned to her after centuries in hiding. Drew’s attentions are overwhelming as he insists that their connection in the past signals their future destiny together, but before she can decide who she truly loves, Cole must learn to harness her unique Akhet abilities if she is to ever understand her role in this strange new world.

At an exclusive school somewhere outside of Arlington, Virginia, students are taught to persuade. The very best will graduate as “poets”: adept wielders of language who belong to an organization that is as influential as it is secretive. Emily Ruff is living on the streets of San Francisco when she attracts the attention of the organization’s recruiters. She is flown across the country for the school’s strange and rigorous entrance exams. Emily becomes the school’s most talented prodigy. Wil Jamieson is brutally ambushed by two strange men in an airport bathroom. Wil is the key to a secret war between rival factions of poets. As the two narratives converge, the work of the poets is revealed and the world crashes toward a Tower of Babel event which would leave all language meaningless.

Sierra Fox s relationship with sexy werewolf Jason Papan is going great, but it doesn’t take a psychic to tell her someone s out to get her. There s too much else going on to worry about just another assassination attempt. The half-sister Sierra never knew she had isn’t a typical teenager. Willow comes with supernatural baggage that grows heavier every time someone close to her dies. The load gets bigger every time the police find the body of another young girl. Sierra s not only dealing with the target on her own back, but the one that a power-hungry woman has painted on her poltergeist-magnet sister. Sierra must face her deepest fears and embrace the darkest of her powers to overcome the looming threat. Or the prediction of her death might just come true.(ebook only)

Knox was born into one of the City’s wealthiest families. A Patron, he has everything a boy could possibly want, including a Proxy to take all his punishments. When Knox plays a practical joke, Syd is forced to haul rocks. And when Knox crashes a car, killing one of his friends, Syd is branded and sentenced to death. Syd is a Proxy. His life is not his own. Knox and Syd have more in common than either would guess. When Knox and Syd realize that the only way to beat the system is to save each other, they flee. Knox’s father is no ordinary Patron, and Syd is no ordinary Proxy. The ensuing cross-country chase will uncover a secret society of rebels, test both boys’ resolve, and shine a blinding light onto a world of those who owe and those who pay. Some debts, it turns out, cannot be repaid.

Who is the Crimson Empress, and what does her conquest of the Named Lands really mean? Who holds the keys to the Moon Wizard’s Tower? The plots within plots are expanding as the characters seek their way out of the maze of intrigue. The world is expanding as they discover lands beyond their previous carefully controlled knowledge. Hidden truths reveal even deeper truths, and nothing is as it seemed to be.

Revivers. Able to wake the recently dead, and let them bear witness to their own demise. Twelve years after the first reviver came to light, they have become accepted by an uneasy public. The testimony of the dead is permitted in courtrooms across the world. In the United States, that responsibility falls to the Forensic Revival Service. Despite his troubled past, Jonah Miller is one of their best. Daniel Harker, the first journalist to bring revival to public attention, is murdered, and Jonah finds himself involved in the hunt for answers. Working with Harker’s daughter Annabel, he becomes determined to find those responsible. They uncover long-hidden truths that call into doubt everything Jonah stands for, and reveal a threat that if not stopped in time, will put all of humanity in danger.

Twenty-year-old Anna Marie was just fired for the third time, this time from a bakery. Her skin, her touch, is a deadly weapon that must be concealed. She accidentally put her boyfriend, Cody, in a coma when they kissed. Horrified, she ran away to Jackson, Mississippi, where she’s been living alone. She meets otherworldly James and everything changes. He’s just like her, completely alone and also on the run. To elude James’s mysterious and dangerous family, the pair takes to the highway. James reveals that his true name is Touch and he christens Anna Marie Rogue. With danger at their heels, they know they can’t run forever. Rogue must decide if she’ll unleash her devastating powers once again in order to save the only person who seems truly to understand and accept her.

The unhappy child of two powerful parents who despise each other, young Lilly turns to the ocean to find solace, which she finds in the form of the eloquent and intelligent sea monster Octavius, a kraken. In Octavius’s many arms, Lilly learns of friendship, loyalty, and family. When Octavius, forbidden by Lilly to harm humans, is captured by seafaring traders and sold to a circus, Lilly becomes his only hope for salvation. Her journey to win Octavius’s freedom is difficult. The circus master wants a Coat of Illusions; the Coat tailor wants her undead husband back from a witch; the witch wants her skin back from two bandits; the bandits just want some company, but they might kill her first. Lilly’s quest tests her resolve, tries her patience, and leaves her transformed in every way.

With the Brotherhood persecuting witches like never before, a divided Sisterhood desperately needs Cate to come into her Prophesied powers. And after Cate’s friend Sachi is arrested for using magic, a war-thirsty Sister offers to help her find answers, if Cate is willing to endanger everyone she loves. Cate doesn’t want to be a weapon, and she doesn’t want to involve her friends and Finn in the Sisterhood’s schemes. But when Maura and Tess join the Sisterhood, Maura makes it clear that she’ll do whatever it takes to lead the witches to victory. Even if it means sacrifices. Even if it means overthrowing Cate. Even if it means all-out war.

As leader of the elite counter-terrorism team Omega Force, former army ranger Jack “Kell” Kellison is always focused on getting the job done. When a Houston high-rise is bombed and the governor killed or missing, Kell’s mission is clear: infiltrate the group suspected of the bombing and neutralize the threat by any means necessary. Once Kell meets beautiful chief suspect Mori Chastaine, he realizes there’s more to this case than meets the eye. And more to Mori than any man could imagine. A lifetime hiding her true nature warns her Kell might not be who he seems. He could be the only one able to help save more innocent humans from becoming pawns in an ancient paranormal power play. If Mori reveals her secret, will Kell join her fight? Or will she become his next target? Hey….this book looks familiar!

For thousands of years, Cross has wandered the earth, a mortal soul trapped in the undying body left behind by Christ. Now he must play the part of reluctant hero, as an angel comes to him for help finding the Mona Lisa, the real Mona Lisa that inspired the painting. Cross’s quest takes him into a secret world within our own. He’s haunted by memories of Penelope, the only woman he truly loved, and he wants to avenge her death at the hands of his ancient enemy, Judas. The angel promises to deliver Judas to Cross, but nothing is ever what it seems when Judas is involved, and when a group of renegade angels looking for a new holy war show up, things truly go to hell.

When Ann LeSage was a little girl, she had an invisible friend, a poltergeist, that spoke to her with flying knives and howling winds. She called it the Insect. With a little professional help, she contained it. The nightmare was over, at least for a time. The nightmare never truly ended. As Ann grew from girl into young woman, the Insect grew with her. It became a thing of murder. As she embarks on a new life married to Michael Voors, a successful young lawyer, Ann believes that she finally has the Insect under control. There are others vying to take that control away from her. They may not know exactly what they’re dealing with. They are the ‘Geisters. And in pursuing their own perverse dream, they risk spawning the most terrible nightmare of all.

Where Joshua and Lobsang once pioneered, now fleets of airships link the stepwise Americas with trade and culture. Mankind is shaping the Long Earth, but in turn the Long Earth is shaping mankind. A new ‘America’, called Valhalla, is emerging more than a million steps from Datum Earth, with core American values restated in the plentiful environment of the Long Earth, and Valhalla is growing restless under the control of the Datum government. The Long Earth is suffused by the song of the trolls, graceful hive-mind humanoids. The trolls are beginning to react to humanity’s thoughtless exploitation. Joshua, now a married man, is summoned by Lobsang to deal with a gathering multiple crisis that threatens Long Earth with a war unlike any mankind has waged before.

It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed, within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it. His only defense is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is an ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.

Ryan Adler and his twin sister, Jane, spent their happiest childhood days at their parent’s mountain Colorado cabin, until divorce tore their family apart. With the house about to be sold, the Adler twins gather with their closest friends for one last snowboarding-filled holiday. While Ryan gazes longingly at Lauren, wondering if his playboy days are over, Jane hopes of reconciling with her old boyfriend evaporate when he brings along his new fiance. Something lurks in the forest, watching the cabin, growing ever bolder as the snow falls, and hunger rises. The true test of their love and loyalty begins as the hideous creatures outside close in, one bloody attack at a time. Ryan, Jane, and their friends must fight for their lives. Or else surrender to unspeakable deaths in the darkened woods.

When fourteen-year-old Irene Sauvelle moves to Cape House on the coast of Normandy, she’s immediately taken by the beauty of the place. She meets a local boy named Ishmael, and the two soon fall in love. A dark mystery is about to unfold, involving a reclusive toymaker who lives in a mansion. Irene’s younger brother dreams of a dark creature hidden deep in the forest. A young girl is found murdered, her body at the end of a path torn through the woods by an inhuman force. Irene and Ishmael wonder if a demonic presence has been unleashed on the inhabitants of Cape House. They’ll have to survive the most terrifying summer of their lives, as they try to piece together the mysteries and secrets hidden in a town torn apart by tragedy, amidst a labyrinth of lights and shadows.(U.S. Release)

Rob Quillen comes to Cloud County, Tennessee, in search of a song that might ease his aching heart. All he knows of the mysterious and reclusive Tufa is what he has read on the internet: they are an enigmatic clan of swarthy, black-haired mountain people whose historical roots are lost in myth and controversy. Close-lipped locals guard their secrets, even as Rob gets caught up in a subtle power struggle he can’t begin to comprehend. A vacationing wife goes missing, raising suspicions of foul play, and a strange feral girl runs wild in the woods, howling in the night like a lost spirit. Change is coming to Cloud County, and only the night wind knows what part Rob will play when the last leaf falls from the Widow’s Tree, and a timeless curse must be broken at last.

The small print: This contest is international to any place Book Depository ships. Contests end at midnight CDT U.S. on Saturday, and winners are announced on Sunday’s blog. It’s the responsibility of the winner to contact me with their mailing info. Books unclaimed after a month will go into a general giveaway pile.